Thursday, August 25, 2016

It's been a long time since I've written and much has happened since then. Many things to cover but today I choose to write about something else.

Recently a mortuary was built near our neighborhood. I watched it go up. It is a nice building with cool windows and nice brick. Then one day there was a black hearse parked out front with an "Open House" sign on the front lawn. Who goes to a mortuary open house?

Lately as I have driven by, which I often do, I've noticed cars in the parking lot. Sometimes the parking lot is full to capacity and other times just a few cars. More and more there are people slowly meandering towards their cars, dressed in black with white handkerchiefs in hand as they hug and dab their eyes. Sometimes seeing them there takes me from all that I have on my mind and I wonder... Who is the person they are missing? Was it an older relative at the end of a long life or a child, who was just beginning to live. They look at me driving by and wonder how the world could go on, how they will go on with out this person? Suddenly, the light changes and I drive on. On to the grocery store and the bank. I am the life continuing on as if nothing happened. Should I do otherwise?

I don't know them and they don't know me. Yet, I have been dressed in black, dabbing my eyes with a white handkerchief, wrapped in the arms of another who feels my pain. Trying our best to breath life back into each other. And on some future day I will stand again where they stand and they will drive by, on their way to the grocery store or the gym or wherever because life goes on... and on they will go.

In my mind's eye I see them, arms around each other, and my heart aches for them. I offer a little prayer that they will feel love and heal so life will go on for them also - it will be different but it will go on. This I know a little about.